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Friday, October 22, 2004
Inmates dying in overcrowded jails
INSTEAD of the lethal injection, inmates are dying of communicable diseases as a result of over crowding in many city jails in Metro Manila.
Raymond Narag, program officer of the Humanitarian Legal Assistance Foundation, said cases of inmates dying in various correction cells are increasing.
"Inmates are dying in our city jails in an alarming rate. They are succumbing to boils, tuberculosis, chicken pox and other simple but highly communicable diseases," said Narag during a press conference held at the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) main office in Intramuros, Manila.
He cited that in Quezon City jail alone 2 to 5 deaths per month were recorded all because of illness while in the National Capital Region there were 55 deaths recorded from January to June of this year.
"This alarming mortality is mainly attributed to the severe congestion of the jails, particularly in the National Capital Region," Narag added.
According to him, many jails in the metropolis can no longer accommodate additional inmates because of their very limited capacity.
Annually, inmates' population increases by 12 percent or from 36,000 prisoners under the supervision of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) in 2002 there are now 54,000 inmates in the BJMP managed cells, he added.
"This drastic increase in the inmate population, sad to say, never translated to additional resources. In fact the budgetary allocation for 2004 is the same as the budget for the previous year and as such did not anticipate the sudden surge," Narag pointed out adding that at least 12,320 inmates are not included in the food allocation nationwide.
Since budget is the main problem, Narag said it is not impossible that healthy prisoners get sick because they are in the same cells and share the same facilities with ill inmates.
Aside from crowded cells and lack of food and medicines, the lack of lawyers to help those who have been imprisoned but who are innocent is also another factor contributing to the increase in the number of prisoners annually.
Narag is proposing some measures to address the problem.
These include the passage of the Pre-Trial release Program bill, Justice
Juvenile System Bill, support to the Integrated Reform Center and construction of the New Quezon City Jail and improving some of the provisions of Republic Act 9165 or the Comprehensive Drugs Law. (Marie neri)
(October 22, 2004 issue)
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